1830's Four page tract - Excerpts from the American Slave Code

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This rare four page tract - Excerpts from the American Slave Code - was published by the Anti-Slavery Bugle, a weekly abolitionist paper published in Salem, Ohio.  That city was home to many Quaker families and an active station on the Underground Railroad, providing the paper with more subscribers.  James Barnaby was the publisher of the paper.  He received support from the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, which allowed the paper to continue to be shipped to other states and remain in circulation for 18 years.  This tract is described as "abridged selections from the statutes of the slave States of the United States.  "The inhumanity and cruelty of these statutes is unspeakable - it assigns a specific number of lashes for slaves who violate these draconian laws and codifies the right for a free Black person caught in a slave state to be sold into slavery.  While there are penalties for whites who violate certain laws (Such as teaching slaves to read or allowing them to engage in any form of commerce) those penalties involve fines, not physical abuse.  One Louisiana law stated that "it is lawful to fire upon runaway negroes who, when pursued, refuse to surrender."  Such laws certainly give credence to the claims that much modern police culture is a direct descendant of the violent history of slave patrols.

Editors of the Anti-Slavery Bugle included abolitionist Benjamin Jones and suffragist, author, and fellow abolitionist Jane Elizabeth Hitchcock (who later married Jones).  Second edition of 10,000.